1. How do I place a classified ad?
First, you will need to register a username. This can be done for free here.

Once you have a registered username, click on the Classifieds link, then click on "Post a Free Classified Ad".

2. How do I remove or edit my ad?
Simply log in to your account, then click on "Member Options". You will see a button that says "Your Classifieds". Click on that button to see all of your ads. Now, click on the ad that you want to remove, and you should see a button in the upper right corner that says "Delete This Ad".

3. Why did you remove my ad?
There are two common responses to this question. The most common is that you have already placed the same ad, and it has not yet expired. Another possibility, though, is that you placed it in an inappropriate category. Please refer to the Rules for Posting a Free Classified Ad on the ad submission page.

Discussions

4. What does ''bump'' mean?
People will often type "bump" when they want to bump a thread back to the top for more attention. It is generally considered to be in bad taste to bump a thread more than once, though. Instead, you should only bump a thread when you have more information to add to the topic.

5. What is a ''troll''?
The term "troll" is often used to refer to someone that makes a series of posts for no reason but to start an argument. It is often difficult to determine whether a post is a troll, but we generally will remove a post if that's what it appears to be.

6. What is the purpose of the Community Voice?
The Community Voice is an open forum, where people in the community are welcome to discuss just about anything that they want. It was originally designed for people to discuss current issues, but it has grown over the years to include many other local and regional topics.

The primary intent is to give our representatives the ability to recognize the true desires of the people, and hopefully correspond with the people to help explain their actions.

7. What is your policy on giving real names?
Names and other identifying information are generally prohibited, with a few exceptions. The forum is moderated by a real person, and while some names are blocked by default, others will usually be removed as quickly as possible.

The exceptions are elected officials or public figures, and business names. For instance, an accountant may operate a business of John Doe, CPA, and in that case discussion the name would be allowed as long as the discussion pertains to the business.

You may also give the name of someone that is publicly known or that has been in the news, but you can generally only discuss the topic for which this person is publicly known. For instance, you can discuss the abilities of a local athlete, but can't discuss their relationships or personal attributes.

Accidents or DeathsIn the case of an accident or death, we ask that you wait a minimum of 2 hours after the accident before posting the name. This is to allow enough time for the family to be informed.

8. Why did my post get removed?
There could be a few reasons. The most common are libel, vulgarity, and personal attacks, although we also either move or remove posts that belong in a different section of the site, like a classified ad, or that are completely off topic from the rest of the thread.

LibelA post is removed for libel if it accuses a specific person of illegal or immoral activity. This does not apply to an anonymous username, but only to real people.

Personal AttacksSimilar to libel, a personal attack usually applies when someone is saying negative things to or about a specific person. This MAY apply to an anonymous username if the moderator feels like the person attacking knows the person being attacked in real life, but this is often an educated guess.

VulgarityThis site is frequented by people of all ages, so we try to keep everything at a PG-13 level. Because of this, certain topics of an adult nature may be removed.

9. Why won't you let me post a Private Message?
The wide majority of the time, people only post a Private Message when they want to argue with someone. The Private Message Center was specifically designed to keep those type of arguments private, so please don't post them.

10. Why are some posts NOT removed that are obviously inappropriate?
We strongly rely on our site visitors to report any thread or post that they think is inappropriate. To do so, just log in to your regular account, then either click on the "flag" icon at the upper right corner of the thread, or follow the "Report Inappropriate Usage" link at the bottom of the thread.

Once something has been reported, one of our moderators will review it as quickly as possible. This is usually within a few hours, but may take as long as 24 hours.

If you have not reported something that's inappropriate, please do not assume that it has been seen!

General Questions

11. Do you sell or rent my information to other companies?
No, we never have and never will! We do use basic demographic information to sell ad space on the site, but that's the extent to which your information will be used.

12. What identifying information do you collect on your visitors?
We do collect basic demographic information, such as what operating system and browser you use, just so that we can keep up with any web design trends. We also collect IP addresses, so that we can determine how many unique visitors we have and how many pages those visitors view.

However, it should be noted that none of this information can be used to identify you. Most IP addresses are used by more than one person (often by hundreds, or even thousands of people), so it really has no use other than to gather a ballpark number of visitors. For example, every person at Lowe's Corporate Office share the same IP address, and everyone using AOL uses one of 4 IP addresses.

13. Why don't you require people to give their real names when creating an account?
To be quite honest, this would be much, much worse than anonymity! When someone gives their real name, we have no way of knowing if they are really the person that they say they are, and with several hundred new users signing up each week (regionally), it would be impossible to verify even a small percentage of them.

14. I'm an elected official, and I have a problem with...
This would generally be one of two questions: you're either bothered by something that has been said incorrectly, or you're offended that someone has spoken poorly of you.

If someone has spoken poorly of you, please understand that there are different laws regarding libel of an elected official than there are of the general public. As a public servant, people are welcome to discuss your job performance; however, they cannot discuss your personal life or, more importantly, that of your family.

If someone has posted something that you believe is incorrect, please realize that they are probably not the only ones that believe what they are saying to be true! As an elected representative, you should see this as an opportunity (and you owe it to your constituents) to reply and correct the misconception.

15. When I try to log in it goes through all right, but the top still says "Welcome, Guest." Why won't it log me in?
This is a common problem for users of Internet Explorer 7.0. This is a very buggy browser!

What happens is that it does log you in, but it stores the header of the page into the browsers cache. So instead of showing you the correct header, it shows the one from before you logged in.

The easiest way to resolve this is to update your browser to the newest version, here.

16. How do I list something under the Local Events calendar?
Simply log in to your regular account, then go here. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you can submit your event for free.

Please be sure to specify whether the event is "Public" or "Private". If you want the event to be announced to the public, then select "Public".

17. I am the owner or manager of a restaurant. How do I list my restaurant and menu?
You can now add and maintain your own restaurant listing! Just go here, and enter all of the information that you have.

By default, restaurant listings can be updated by any account older than 30 days. If you would like to "lock" your listing so that no one other than you can update it, just place a check next to "Check here if you are the owner or manager".

Private Messages

18. Someone sent a Private Message to me that was rude or threatening. What can you do about it?
A Private Message (or PM for short) is just like an email, and the same rules apply. PMs are not moderated, and there are no current disciplinary actions being considered for a PM.

If you do not wish to receive a PM from a specific person, we do offer an Ignore feature. Simply add the username to your Ignore list.

Communicating a threat is illegal, though, so if someone threatens you by PM, you should contact your local Sheriff's Dept.

19. Someone sent a Private Message to me that was a SCAM or SPAM. What can you do about it?
Please report scammers and spammers as quickly as possible! We will block them immediately, and your expediency will help us to block them before they can send many more PMs.